Little Sisters.(Kevin Hughes) “Are you certain?”

Oort waited a bit before replying. The Captain did not usually question her work. Which could only mean the Captain had reached a decision. A wisp or two of Oort glowed a light pink, but only for a moment. Those were the wisps of thoughts that maybe her analysis was wrong. It was not. So she brightened into her most confident yellow:

“I am certain.”

The Captain let a long purple glow extend for miles. Oort and the rest of the crew knew that could mean only one thing: Contact.

The entire crew touched the purple tendril - letting their individual colors blend into almost white light. The light of action, purpose, decision.

“Well, it seems we have found concentrated organic molecules. Clumped into spaces so tightly knit that it defies belief." ( A brief orange flair shot out, but only for a few hundred kilometers. The Captain was keeping herself under strict control.)

It was not Oort but Gauss who signaled the obvious question:

“Is it alive? I mean to have that much organic material crammed into such a nano scale…can it even think?”

The whiteness of the combined crew dipped back into the red/orange of uncertainty. Except for the Captain’s glow.

“Gauss, I can’t begin to understand a chemistry restricted to a space we can barely see with our finest instruments. But if what Oort is saying is true, we are talking about some kind of intelligence. Because (and now even the Captain’s normally staid blue glow shifted almost to Indigo) Oort has explained to me that in that tiny space there is more organic activity than on our entire ship…combined.”

Tendrils flared: red, green, yellow, orange, purple, and they flared for thousands of miles. More organic activity than in our ship? In a space six feet long, and eighteen inches thick? Impossible. But there it was, with three other capsules of matching organic densities.

White light formed in a ball, no tendrils at all. It was a command:

“Make contact.”

Oort turned and spoke to Quanta- the best Communications Officer in the Fleet. The one who decided the funny infinitesimal clump of heavy metals found in interstellar space - was a machine. Built by someone. Someone tiny. So small that it would have been merely a mote on any known form of life they had ever encountered. But Quanta had proved that no one could have scavenged that much metal in one place without combing most of the Galaxy.

It was her interpretation of that clump that set us all on this course.

“Quanta, have you prepared the message you think they will understand?”

“Yes, Oort, Captain, Crew. If my understanding of the metal object is correct, they use frequencies of sound, not light, to communicate. A very narrow band at that. So I composed the shortest message I could send.”

“Okay. The Captain said make contact. Send it.”

It only took a few minutes for the answer to come back. Quanta had it deciphered in moments. The Crew, including the Captain, shone bewilderment across the spectrum, matched only by the laughter and excitement among them. Quanta shared it with everyone:

“We are called “Earthlings.” Are we talking to that big cloud of gas? Our Scientists are trying to figure out why it keeps changing spectrum colors. Is that you?”

No one knew that Life could exist in such a small amount of Space. And apparently the Earthlings never knew that life could exist spread over such a large area, even though their Scientists knew organic molecules abounded in deep space. On Earth, it turns out, amines have to be nearby to interact.

All that came later, but Quanta’s reply to the Earthlings became famous all over the Galaxy. For Quanta sent back this short reply:

“Hello, little Sisters.”

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